


Laura Hale's Taco Hacienda

by Kian



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, And Derek is the chef, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Laura owns a taco stand, M/M, No curly fries were hurt in the making of this fic, Tacos, This is entirely silly and should be taken seriously not at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 08:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3040892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kian/pseuds/Kian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tacos. Tacos were Stiles' drug of choice now. Tacos, and the chiseled features of the taco-slinging Greek god down at Laura Hale's Taco Hacienda, which had opened to much speculation, gossip, and just in time for the summer season, when crowds of beach goers passed through Beacon Hills on their seasonal trek to the beaches further south.</p><p>Stiles had intended to join their ranks this year, but... tacos.</p><p>And Derek Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laura Hale's Taco Hacienda

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been sitting in my WIP file for over a year, and while I'm no longer watching Teen Wolf and expect to make very infrequent forays back into the fandom, I couldn't let the epic saga of Stiles' summer fling with tacos go untold.
> 
> This is silly crack stuff and not intended to be taken seriously, though I hope you enjoy it. The story is un-betaed, so if you see anything outrageous, please report it to the front desk.

Stiles hadn't had curly fries in three weeks. His father was concerned. Scott was concerned. Even Allison was concerned, and she hadn't been around most of the summer because she'd been off on a special summer internship at Brown that plugged into her double major almost freakishly well.

(Stiles suspected her father had gone to great lengths to source said internship, only to be foiled by Scott and Allison's mid-term breakup and Allison's "study buddy" Isaac applying for and receiving the same internship opportunity. Total coincidence, Papa Argent. Totally.)

Still, that didn't change the fact that Stiles was without the warm, soothing, crispy, and altogether sublime comfort of his daily curly fries kick.

The reason for said curly fries being missing from Stiles' life was that another sort of fast food had moved into that particular place in his soul, and wasn't relinquishing its control any time soon.

Tacos. Tacos were Stiles' drug of choice now. Tacos, and the chiseled features of the taco-slinging Greek god down at Laura Hale's Taco Hacienda, which had opened to much speculation, gossip, and just in time for the summer season, when crowds of beach goers passed through Beacon Hills on their seasonal trek to the beaches further south.

Stiles had intended to join their ranks this year, but... tacos.

And Derek Hale.

And tacos, too, because truth be told, Derek was more than just a pretty face. And pretty tacos. Because his tacos were pretty. So pretty. But still! They were also heaven wrapped in a flour tortilla and packaged in a flimsy wrapping of tin foil, delivered in a plastic basket that had Laura's lupine logo emblazoned across the bottom. Derek made the most delectable taco in the tri-county area.

And Stiles had checked. He was nothing if not thorough in his research in this area.

That may or may not have something to do with the fact that Derek refused to make small talk about anything that wasn't related to either tacos, taco seasoning, or ingredients for tacos.

Stiles himself harbored a deep suspicion that Derek could, in fact, discuss other topics — he could hardly function normally without being able to do so...right?

It's just that Stiles wasn't the only one who'd noticed how pretty Derek's....tacos were, and the guy had shut down his linguistic affability long before Scott had talked Stiles into trying something different, "for once, dude. Please. I love the fries, but if I see another burger this month, it will be the death of me. Please can't we just get something else today? Like tacos! You like tacos. There's a new place over on Fourth..."

(Let it be known that Stiles was not nearly as tyrannical in his culinary choices as Scott liked to believe. On the instance in question, he had almost immediately given in to his best friend's desire for a little variety in his diet. He'd even conceded shortly after that first visit that the trip had been worth the mental anguish of knowing there were curly fries in the world and not personally going to eat them. Once he'd picked his jaw up off the floor, anyway.)

Anyway, tacos were Stiles' love now. Stiles LOVED tacos. He'd seen the light. Sorry, curly fries. His heart had been won over by another pretty face. He was just that shallow. Really, he didn't deserve curly fries in the first place. They should really find someone better for them.

Just... not his dad, curly fries. Have a little pity on a boy, for old time's sake. No need to stoop to being petty just because Stiles was so weak willed.

Lydia returned on the beginning of the second week of Stiles’ taco identity crisis, but it wasn't Scott, the Sheriff, or even Allison who recruited her to stage the intervention. Oh no, the instigator of the "Stiles Stilinski life makeover of taco and sanity preservation" was none other than Laura Hale. Because, while she loved her brother, she loved watching him suffer just that eensy bit more.

Besides, it was good for him. Built character and all that.

Which was how — through an elaborate series of incorrect grocery orders and social maneuvering — it came to be that Stiles was minding his own business, waiting like any upstanding citizen for Lydia to meet him at the Taco Hacienda (which was more of a converted Airstream trailer than a _house_ , to be honest, but Stiles could appreciate that “Hale’s Taco Hacienda”  rolled off the tongue far more easily than “Hale’s Taco Airstream with Quaint Outdoor Picnic Table Seating”; some concessions of strict literalism must occasionally be made for the sake of expediency and aesthetics), when the back door of the Airstream slammed open and Derek Hale in all his grumpy, gruff, and grouchy glory (alliteration for the win!) stuck his head out and called for Laura in a tone of voice that heavily implied he was seriously contemplating sororicide.

Problem was, there weren’t too many people around besides Stiles, who was totally minding his own business. Not at all sniffing around in a great, drooly stupor of anticipated culinary bliss that was effectively dulling the pain of very likely having been stood up by Lydia — _again_ — given that she’d ordered him to meet her at the Taco Hacienda a half hour before opening, and said Hacienda-but-actually-an-Airstream-Trailer was now overdue to open for business by fifteen minutes.

The point was, Laura had yet to make an appearance at her Taco Hacienda that morning (look, tacos at 11am was a perfectly reasonable thing for summer hours, and it meant that Stiles could pick up a nice taco salad for his dad in time for the start of his lunch break; he’s just being a dutiful son, here) and Stiles was the only person lingering in front of the food truck so far.

Derek called again for Laura, but it was clear that he wasn’t really expecting her to suddenly crop up. He dragged a hand across his face in frustration and glanced inside the truck, from whence the smell of meaty, taco goodness was wafting.

Stiles was doing his best to seem casual — super, super casual — but he’s only a man and Derek cooked tacos in a cut off tee and an apron he cinched tight around his hips, so there was just a hell of a lot of arms and thinly-veiled abs and proportional amazingness going on in front of him and Stiles couldn’t help that he noticed things. He was raised by a cop! Noticing things was like his superpower. And there was just _so much_ to notice…

Casual! Super casual. _Sooo_ casual.

“Kid! Hey, kid!”

Stiles looked around the little seating area, up and down the street, but he saw no children. When he looked back at Derek, the other man was staring at him in clear exasperation.

“Are you...talking to me?” Stiles asked, pointing at himself with both hands because there was just a lot of possibility for misunderstanding here. There was a potted tree at the entrance to the seating area, and a parked car at the curb. Derek might be addressing inanimate objects, and who was Stiles to judge? Well, obviously he _would_ judge just a tiny little bit were that the case, but not without a healthy dose of compassion and understanding. Stiles was nice like that, a big person, a real swell guy…

“Yes, _you_ ,” Derek rolled his eyes.

Ah, then. Derek’s confusion was of the more pedestrian variety, but Stiles was never one to let a misunderstanding...stand.

“I’m not a kid, dude. I’m in college.”

“Hey, _kid_ ,” Derek replied, leaning hard on the objectionable word in question, “have you seen Laura?”

“Laura-your-sister, Laura?”

“Yes, _that_ Laura.”

That vein at Derek’s temple probably wasn’t supposed to be so clearly visible, Stiles thought. Dude needed to learn to let the little stuff go, relax a little, _unwind_...

“Nope.”

Derek growled — straight up _growled_ — but not at Stiles, so he took that as a pretty decent sign that Derek’s grumpy grouchiness wasn’t meant for him. Derek rubbed at his eyebrows — his very considerable eyebrows, although Stiles wasn’t in any position to be holding any man’s facial hair against them — with the heels of his hands for a minute, before looking into the Airstream again and then back at Stiles.

“Look...what’s your name?” Derek asked, his whole posture deflating like a day-old balloon.

“Stiles,” Stiles said. Helpfully, he thought.

“What the hell kind of name is Stiles?” Derek huffed.

“People in glass Airstreams shouldn’t throw rocks about weird naming choices,” Stiles suggested, pointing up at the sign bolted to the roof of the food truck.

“What?” Derek gaped — gaped _attractively_ , somewhat improbably; when Stiles did the equivalent, Lydia told him he looked like a dead fish — before shaking himself and redirecting. Stiles could appreciate a man with focus… “Look. _Stiles_. If I give you some cash, could you run to the grocery store and get me some lettuce and tomatoes? I don't any and I can’t leave the grill if I wanna open by noon. You’ll get free tacos.”

Stiles was up out of his seat and at the bottom of the Airstream’s short stairs before Derek was entirely done talking, but that’s because he was a good citizen and a concerned patron and not at all because Derek was offering him tacos for a bit of glorified grocery shopping.

“Sure,” Stiles said, drawing out the ‘r’ while he watched Derek shove a hand into the pocket of his impossible tight jeans, which caused them to tug and strain in ways that Stiles would have needed to be dead and buried to ignore.

A crumbled collection of five and tens was dumped into Stiles’ hand, Derek huffed out a ‘thank you’ and a short list of what he needed and in what quantities, and then Stiles found himself staring at the shut door of the Airstream, his hand still held out where the money had been pushed into his grip.

“Okay,” Stiles said to the empty air, before setting off for the grocery store four blocks down and a stupid-big parking lot away.

If he lingered over the heads of lettuce, inspected the tomatoes — dismissing the hot-house variety for the vine-ripened, premium tomatoes because he was not going back to the Taco Hacienda looking like a man who couldn’t navigate the produce aisle — and insisted on paper bags over plastic, then it was just because Stiles was, in a very real sense, purchasing food for himself, what with the promise of free tacos at the end of this adventure.

It took him a full half-hour round trip, but he thinks the frantic look on Derek’s face is a little extreme when he throws open the door to the Airstream to accept the groceries. Well, to beckon Stiles inside anyway, _with_ the groceries. A small crowd was forming outside by that time, muttering and grumbling over the closed serving windows of the Airstream, and Derek’s part time help — a guy Stiles had gone to school with named Boyd — was trying to keep the crowd of hungry lunchgoers appeased with promises of tacos on the very near horizon.

“You know how to chop a tomato?” Derek asked over his shoulder, from where he’s tending the meat on the grill.

“Of course?” Stiles said, a little baffled and somewhat mortally offended at the implication that he might not know how to chop a tomato.

“Then rinse them off, and get chopping,” Derek barked.

And that was how Stiles found himself bedecked in a white apron, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, chopping tomatoes and shredding lettuce while Boyd opened the service window and started taking orders.

And once the veggies were tended to, there were tortillas to warm and salsas to refresh and meats to flip and orders to fill, so that by the time Stiles came up for air, it was nearly 3pm and the food truck was shutting down until dinner service in a few more hours.

Derek passed out the flubbed orders they’d held back from customers, tucking a burrito into Stiles’ hands with a nod to follow Boyd out to eat at the picnic tables in front while Derek turned down the grill and wiped down the worktops before coming out to join them.

Boyd started inhaling his lunch right away, but Stiles sat staring at the burrito, confused.

“You know I’m not employed here, right?” Stiles asked aloud.

Boyd grunted a likely affirmative.

“Then what the hell just happened?” Stiles persisted.

A heavy hand clapped his shoulder and Derek dropped onto the bench beside him, looking somehow even more ridiculously good looking after four hours over a hot stove than was entirely fair of the universe.

“You earned your free lunch,” Derek huffed. “Dig in.”

“Oh no,” Stiles protested. “No, I went grocery shopping for a free lunch. This was above and beyond free lunch territory, dude. I’m the Sheriff’s kid; I know from labor laws.”

“Thought you said you weren’t a kid,” Derek smirked.

“I am his child, the fruit of his loins —” Boyd chose that moment to choke, and it seemed to take him an unreasonably long time to clear his air ducts again. When he did, he promptly relocated to another picnic table, back turned to Stiles and Derek. Rude. “And so I am a kid in the lone sense that is required to establish my former dependent status. For all other purposes, however, I am nineteen and a legal adult and able to do such things as vote, buy porn, sign contracts, and date older men.”

That time, it was Derek who choked.

“That’s a very specific list,” he said when he’d recovered.

“But as I haven’t signed a contract,” Stiles continued, “to be your employee in exchange for monetary payment, you’re going to have to reimburse me for my time and effort in another way.”

Derek shrugged and offered, “More free lunches?”

“We’ve already established free lunch payment for grocery services, but this was full-on assistance in the kitchen, sous chef stuff. That’s gotta to be a bigger charge, based on the existing pay scale.”

Derek huffed into his half-eaten taco, hiding a smile. “And what would square us up again?”

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“A date,” Stiles exclaimed before he could think better — or at all — of it. “You, me, another type of cuisine. A date.”

Derek froze, staring at the carved and weather-beaten surface of the picnic table before finally turning and looking at Stiles.

“What if you don’t like the date?” he asked.

Stiles licked his lips, watches Derek follow the motion with his eyes.

“Enjoyment isn’t mandatory, just participation, for the settling of accounts.”

“And if you _do_ like the date?” Derek drawled, catching and holding Stiles’ gaze.

“Then, we might be able to maybe come to some sort of longer-term arrangement,” Stiles stammered out.

Derek hummed to himself, smiling wickedly as he took another bite of sweet, sweet taco nirvana.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Boyd moaned from the other seat, dropping his head with a thump against the tabletop.

And that was how Stiles found a summer job. He didn’t earn a nickel, but he was pretty sure — between the tacos and the taco-making boyfriend — that he was getting the better bargain.

* * *

end

 


End file.
